Early attempts at achieving freedom to roam
In 1884 James Bryce MP introduced the first bill for freedom to roam. The bill was reintroduced every year until 1914 and failed each time. In 1932 six people were sent to jail for leading a mass trespass on Kinder Scout in the Peak District, causing a national outcry and bringing the campaign for freedom to roam further into the public eye.
In 1936 Arthur Creech-Jones introduced a private members bill which became the Access to Mountains Act 1939, compromising walkers' rights and making trespass a criminal offence in certain circumstances. It was bitterly opposed by the Ramblers and was later repealed.
In 1947 the Hobhouse Committee recommended legislation for public access to open countryside. This led to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 under which open country was defined as mountain, moor, heath, down, cliff and foreshore. Local authorities were required to survey open countryside, assess the level of access provided and to secure further access by means of agreements, orders or by purchasing the land. In practice the legislation has had little effect.
In 1968 the Countryside Act sought to widen the scope of the 1949 Act by widening the definition of open country to include woodland and riverside. However this widening of the definition just showed that permissive access was not the way forward as no new access agreements for such land have ever been made under the 1968 Act.
The recent Ramblers' campaign for freedom to roam
In 1981 the government started selling off Forestry Commission woods. Since then 10% by area (over 40% by number) of the Commission's woods have been sold with no duty placed on the new owners to provide access. In 1983 the Ramblers held a Woodland Walks day to highlight this loss and the possibility of even greater loss if the entire Forestry Commission was to be privatised. In 1994 the government abandoned forestry privatisation, mainly due to issues of access. Individual forest sales, however, continued until the incoming Labour government stopped them.
In 1985 the Ramblers launched the Forbidden Britain campaign, with the aim of securing a statutory right of access to open countryside. Snailsden Moor in the Peak District was the venue for the annual Forbidden Britain Day. By 1991 the annual event was seeing increasing mass trespasses, on a scale not seen since the 1930s - that year saw 500 ramblers walk across Thurlstone Moor in South Yorkshire.
Following on from the success of the Forbidden Britain campaign in raising the issue of access to the countryside the Ramblers began lobbying the major political parties for a commitment to introducing legislation. This commitment would eventually appear in the Labour Party's 1997 general election manifesto.
In the late 1980s the Ramblers campaigned vigorously to protect access to countryside during water privatisation.
The Countryside and Rights of Way Act
In 1997 the new Labour government was elected on a manifesto that included a commitment to introduce legislation allowing the public freedom to roam on mountain, moor, heath and down. In March 1998 Michael Meacher, the then Environment Minister, confirmed this intention in a speech to the House of Commons. The resulting Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (CRoW) eventually received royal assent on 30 November 2000.
After a long mapping process the new right of access to mapped areas of mountain, moor, heath land, down land and registered common land under CroW was fully implemented on Monday 31st of October 2005.
